Dubbing, 101
WinnerEJ
how to get started dubbing. I sent him the following, and am interested in any
helpful critique or additions.
1 love
ej
http://www.winsukrecords.bizland.com
How to dub, 101.
What we now call dub originated around 1972-74 in Jamaica, pioneered by
King Tubby. Although instrumental versions of songs had been featured on the
flip side of previous JA singles, Tubby was the first to realize that by
discreetly separating the sound of each instrument on a backing track you could
both alter the sound of the instrument and alter the relationships between the
instruments.
A. Do I build a dub, or deconstruct a song?
This is your first major decision; if you are going to deconstruct a song, you
need first record a song to deconstruct. Otherwise, you can simply begin with a
dub-sound in your head and skip over the song-stage, if you're adept at dubbing
(it's much easier to deconstruct a song).
B. The four primary modes of modern dub:
1. Computer-based software (eg, cubase (spelling?)) - a dub can be built
entirely using the wave files on a computer, which are recorded from a midi or
other sample-technology.
2. Midi- one can skip the wave file construction phase entirely and build dubs
using midi software alone. This will limit the effects you get, however, and
remember that any midi file will sound different when at last played through
different midi-synthesizers.
3. Going into a studio by yourself or with a band. Doing this with a whole
band is the preferred method of dubbing, since your basic tracks will be as
lively as that of any instrument played by hand in a group of like-minded
musicians. If you must go in alone, your big problem will be how you will play
the drum and the bass-parts - will these be by programmed machines, or can you
actually play these instruments themselves? If the latter, you are in a very
good position. Others, like myself, are left with programmed or keyboarded
bass and drum machines, which can never be so altered that they will not sound
machine-generated. However, you can get a pretty full sound out of these
machines if you pump them up to the proper volume levels and add enough reverb.
Most of this will be have to be done by ear; use analog recording, so you can
push into the VU red (digital often just blanks this out). Don't follow the
handbooks, experiment and trust your ears - that touch of distortion maybe
exactly what you need.
4. Purchasing or renting studio-level recording equipment. Do not bother with
home-recording equipment (like the cassette four-track) unless you have a room
you can sound-proof; even then, be prepared for "air" on the tracks. Also, if
you go this route, you will need to buy or rent effects generators; these come
in two basic varieties, the old fashioned pedal generators plugged between the
instrument and the amplifier, or digital models than can be plugged into
individual instruments or into the recording or mixing deck. (If you use a
studio, it should already have such a generator in place; again, don't follow
the rule book, trust your ears.)
Finally, it must be pointed out that many a young dubber wishes he/she
could take an old record and find some way to deconstruct it. There is
actually soft-ware that will strip vocals from a wave file; but these can't get
you what you really want - discreet separation of the instruments. Unless you
have access to the original tapes, you should probably give up this idea, that
Wailers version of "Dreamland" is always going to be what it is, unless you
want to apply the same effects to all instruments equally.
C. Effects:
Of course what attracted you to dub in the first place were the sounds being
made with instruments that should never have happened but through accidental
accoustics of the electronic recording process. The chief of these is the
echo, of which there are two types: reverb-generated and delay-generated. The
reverb-generated is quite popular among "roots" dubbers, but I never saw the
point in it; Tubby himself used delay echo, and I prefer this, which is very
clear and discreet, whereas reverb echo is brassy, a little muddy, and to some
extent out of your control. That's not necessarily a bad thing - accidents can
sometimes work for you. But my own experience suggests that using reverb-echo
well takes considerable experimentation and practice, delay-echo is fairly ease
to manipulate and "get right".
One important quality of dub - which separates it from traditional song
structures - is the over-riding presence of the drum and the bass. Don't
forget this - you are building your dub up from the drum-and-bass relationship.
Start your dubbing by determining this relationship - if you go the other way,
you will end up with a mutant instrumental.
By the way, there is an essntial component to the basic structure of
reggae to remember here - the drums play two phrases for every one bass phrase.
You're actually working with two overlapping bar structures. If you forget
this, you'll end up abbreviating your basslines or expanding the drum patterns
beyond the attention level of the average listener. Again, if you want to do
that, or can live with it, okay; but see it and use it as a choice.
Of course the very first effect explored in dub - in rudimentary form
before Tubby - was the "drop-out" - the sudden disappearance of an instrument
or motiff. There are no rules-of-thumb to this, this is one effect over which
you have total control (unless you are mixing down to one track, in which case
you better get it right the first time, or you'll have to do it all over
again).
Sampling - this has become very popular over the years, but it has also
given rise to a lot of unpleasant litigation - you can sample to your heart's
content if a) no one can recognize the sample or its copyright has gone out of
date; b) you procure a license for it; or, c) you're doing it entirely for your
own enjoyment and have no intention of putting it up for sale. I myself don't
bother with sampling, it's too easy. But others rely on it and find somethings
to do with it that would never occur to me.
Phasing, chorus, flange - these must be applied tactfully. Lee Perry was
a master of it - but I've experimented with these over and over, and I just
can't get them right. The root obstacle to overcome is that application of
these effects changes the pitch of the instrument to which they are applied.
My assumption is that Perry probably had one hand on the effects-control, and
another on the pitch-control, and altered both simultaneously; but I've never
quite accomplished this.
Percussion "effects" - these are not really effects, they are parts played
by a bongo or conga player let loose over the basic riddim; obviously this has
to be recorded last, and your drummer needs to feel he/she has done a good job
on it. Effects can then be applied to this part as one feels necessary.
Finally there are effects generated specifically by reverb. This is a
real matter of taste; I like a lot of reverb on the drums, but little on all
the other instruments. Steve Mosco at Jah Warrior pours the reverb on very
thick (most of his echo is reverb-generated) and has developed a following for
this sound. Remember here that reverb is the main source for feed-back - which
may be desirable, but again must be used knowingly.
D. All right. I have my dub, how do I get an audience for it?
I wish I could tell you to ship a copy with a promo-pack to RAS records, and
all will fall into place. Unfortunately, there are only a handful of dubbers
with enough repute to get another label than their own to release them -
Scientist and Mad Professor are the only two that come to mind (Perry has such
clout, but he doesn't do dub much anymore, and the "dubs" that Sly and Robbie
do are actually instrumentals, their straight dub work usually involves
bringing in a mix-engineer).
You can, of course, put your dubs on any number of MP3 sites, like
mp3.com, or a Real Audio site of your own making. If you want to sell your
dub, you can rig your site for pay-to-download, but more likely you will want
to make a compact disc (don't bother with vinyl, you'll never get your money
back). (Mp3.com actually will press CDs out of your mp3 files charging the
audience-customer and taking a 50% cut.)
If you go by disc, once you've found a cd presser you can trust, you can
choose among the following:
1. a reputable distributor;
2. distributing yourself (very risky - you'd be surprised how few stores
believe they actually owe money to self-distributing artists);
3. Mail order (Kelvin Richards of Dub Funk Association says he's been
fairly successful at this);
4. Developing an internet site with credit card processing either by
yourself through establishing a merchant account with a bank, or by a
third-party reseller (which was my choice - this limits income, but also
eliminates a lot of personal hassle).
Then comes the fun part - promotion. You had better lose all sense of
modesty - assume you're the best dub-master on the planet, and describe your
creation as a real masterpiece. And you had best develop a plan for doing this
- remember to set aside at least 300 copies for DJs. Concentrate on those DJs
with independent radio shows (eg, college stations), most commercial DJs have a
playlist someone else prepares for them.
Remember to promote yourself in every possible medium - you never know
where your most loyal fan will first hear of you.
As you get into this phase of your project, you will need to make a final
BIG decision - do you want to be listened to, or do you want to make money.
These are not mutually exclusive, but the fact is there are promotional - and
even creative - tactics you must employ to make money, and you need to put a
lot of work into it. Dub is an underground music in the truest and best sense
of the word - It demands a lot of close attention if it is to be heard in all
its detail; most people don't bother going to such an extent of listening, and
end up treating dub like sonic wall-paper. To a large extent, reggae-based
dub hasn't found a niche; rather it has fallen in a chasm of the musical
terrain, but in such a way that it provides a bridge over that chasm for those
with interests in other forms of reggae or other forms of dance music.
It took me 2 years to get this; now I am content to break even and get a
listen. If I count up the reported markets for the radio shows that have
played at least one track of mine at least once, then approximately 1 million
people have heard at least one of my tracks. I haven't made a dime, but on most
projects I broke even, and I say the opportunity to get a hearing by 1 million
people in the currrent era is in itself an accomplishment, no matter whether
their response was positive or negative.
Well, there it is - I can't think of any other general rule of thumb here, from
here on it's detail work. And that will depend on what you want to accomplish,
and the detailed resources available to use. So, one last point to make - dub
is an adventure. Songs touch the emotion, but the primary experience of dub is
"Oh, wow!" Keep that in mind and you can't do too badly.
chucky the fish
respect!!
- chucky the FISH
WinnerEJ
>
>May I wish you Peace and Love
>
>Messian Dread
No, I understood what you are getting at; but it really depends on how you
apply these functions - its possible to use delay for something other than
echo, for instance. But I know that on at least 2 pieces I recorded, the
reverb created an echo, once giving my bass notes the quality of halfnotes,
and then later turning my dum-machine "rim-shot" into a clatter. The first
mentioned piece is where I began learning the difference, since the other two
instrumentalists were using delay pedals, while my bass had been plugged into
the deck with the reverb on a tad higher than normal for a simple recording;
the guitarist's echo was a series of repeating chops, very clean, while the
echo on the bass made it throb. It must be noted that the guitarist, Fred
Wagner, produced this and got pretty much the sound he was looking for, so he
probably had experimented prior to this - had the reverb on the bass been any
much higher, it would just have sounded as a low rumble.
Remember, reverb was created back in the '50's to give a band in a small
room the sound of a large hall, which means that bounce-back echo is part of
reverb's original design, since accoustically this is what you expect an
electric instrument to do in a large hall. Paradoxically, delay was originally
intended to stretch out an electric instrument's sustain (which it doesn't do
very successfully- direct feedback using a tube amp is far more effective) -
the choppy repetition echo is accidental to delay's design.
Interesting points to raise and think about - delay's echo is a happy
accident, reverb's echo was intended but is usually kept to such a minimum that
it's hardly noticeable. A point to remember about technology - it often fails
to deliver its promised service, but it will always result in the production of
some effect, which you then need to decide whether you can use or not.
1 love shared,
ej
Werner de Bruijn
> Hi, Winner, good piece!
>
> What I find interesting use your usage of the term "delay". You seem
> to call both echo and reverb "delay". No I always perceived that echo
> and delay is the same where reverb is something different. I know one
> has pre-delay and reverb are actually sparse echo's, still, that would
> only justify calling reverb echo and delay echo.
> I'll stop before I get more confusing ;-)
Ok, here's the '101' on delay and reverb ;-) :
From a technical point of view the reverb of a room can be described as a
series of delayed versions of the original signal that originate from
reflections at walls, floor, objects etc.
In modern acoustics, we (I am an acoustician) describe the acoustics of a
room in terms of its 'impulse response': just think of clapping your hands
and detecting all the sound that arrives at your ears after the direct
sound as a function of time. If you visualize this you can see delayed
(and attenuated) versions of this direct sound arriving at the listener's
position. This impulse response carries a great deal of information about
the acoustics of a room.
The first reflections ('early reflections') that arrive within the first
100ms (roughly) can be identified separately in this response and also
contribute more or less individually to the perceived sound. As time goes
by, the density of reflections as function of time becomes larger and
larger (reflections themselves reflect and these reflected reflections are
reflected again etc.) until it becomes a 'blur' of reflections that are
best decribed statistically. this is what we call 'reverberation' and adds
'warmth' to the sound.
So, yes: reverberation can be described as a complicated series of delays,
but the effect of single delays (relatively largly spaced in time) and
what is usually called reverb on sound is very different.
I'll be happy to discuss this more in-depth with people who are interested
;-)
Werner.
--
*************************************************
"Strickly Drum an' Bass mek yu wine up yu waist!"
*************************************************
Allen Kaatz
> Interesting points to raise and think about - delay's echo is a happy
> accident,
Electronic delay was invented on purpose by Les Paul the guitar
player (he also invented overdubbing). It was not an accident.
> reverb's echo was intended but is usually kept to such a minimum that
> it's hardly noticeable. A point to remember about technology - it often fails
> to deliver its promised service, but it will always result in the production of
> some effect, which you then need to decide whether you can use or not.
> 1 love shared,
> ej
Just to try to clear this up... Most audio professionals would never
refer to reverberation as "echo". Reverb is the sound of many
ambient sound reflections in an enclosed space, which combine to
give the listener impression of that space. Sometimes reverb can
have an echo-like quality, if some of the reflections are clear
enough, but reverb is more blurred and not distinct like an echo
is. Echo is generally considered to be clear, precise repeats of
the original sound. The term "delay" is similar, just meaning that
the original sound is "delayed" by a determined amount of time and
then perhaps repeated. Both echo and reverb occur naturally, but
the electronic versions give you control over the parameters.
Al
Werner de Bruijn
> while my bass had been plugged into
> the deck with the reverb on a tad higher than normal for a simple recording;
> the guitarist's echo was a series of repeating chops, very clean, while the
> echo on the bass made it throb.
Putting delay on a bass is usually not a good idea. It can only be useful when
applied to basslines with very short notes largely spaced in time. Some of Robbie
Shakespear's basslines could be an example. Otherwise, only a small of amount of
reverb (as opposed to delay) can be useful from a musical point of view.
> Remember, reverb was created back in the '50's to give a band in a small
> room the sound of a large hall, which means that bounce-back echo is part of
> reverb's original design, since accoustically this is what you expect an
> electric instrument to do in a large hall.
As an acoustician, I would have to consider this hall as being very bad design. In
fact, the worst thing that can happen to a concert hall is that there is a separate
perceivable 'echo' from any boundary (for example a wall), usually called 'flutter'
in acoustics.
Werner de Bruijn
> B. The four primary modes of modern dub:
> 1. Computer-based software (eg, cubase (spelling?)) - a dub can be built
> entirely using the wave files on a computer, which are recorded from a midi or
> other sample-technology.
This is really not the usual way in which modern dub is created. The normal way of
working is to build the song in a sequencer program that controls a chain of
electronic instruments through midi data. Acoustic parts such as vocals and live
percussion etc can then be integrated in the midi sequence as wav files. This is
what a program like Cubase does (so it's not a 'wave recording' program such as
Cooledit.)
> 2. Midi- one can skip the wave file construction phase entirely and build dubs
> using midi software alone. This will limit the effects you get, however,
This is not true. In fact, the opposite may be more the case.
> and
> remember that any midi file will sound different when at last played through
> different midi-synthesizers.
Obviously, you create the midi sequence for use in your own studio.
> 4. Purchasing or renting studio-level recording equipment. Do not bother with
> home-recording equipment (like the cassette four-track) unless you have a room
> you can sound-proof; even then, be prepared for "air" on the tracks.
I think you would be interested to take a look into the homestudios of many of
todays top dub producers and see that they are in fact not professional at all.
Much of the equipment that is used is in fact of the cheapest kind which would make
a professional studio engineer (and I know quite a lot of them) laugh. (This, by
the way, also includes my own equipment).
> Also, if
> you go this route, you will need to buy or rent effects generators; these come
> in two basic varieties, the old fashioned pedal generators plugged between the
> instrument and the amplifier, or digital models than can be plugged into
> individual instruments or into the recording or mixing deck. (If you use a
> studio, it should already have such a generator in place; again, don't follow
> the rule book, trust your ears.)
I think a good thing is to point out that the adding of the effects is best done in
the final mixing stage when the actual 'dubbing' is done, not during the recording
of the individual tracks.
> Finally, it must be pointed out that many a young dubber wishes he/she
> could take an old record and find some way to deconstruct it. There is
> actually soft-ware that will strip vocals from a wave file;
Even this is almost never really succesful: only when the voice is exactly in the
center of the stereo image and also completely dry (without reverb etc)
> but these can't get
> you what you really want - discreet separation of the instruments. Unless you
> have access to the original tapes, you should probably give up this idea,
Indeed, it's not possible in any way.
> C. Effects:
> Of course what attracted you to dub in the first place were the sounds being
> made with instruments that should never have happened but through accidental
> accoustics of the electronic recording process. The chief of these is the
> echo, of which there are two types: reverb-generated and delay-generated. The
> reverb-generated is quite popular among "roots" dubbers, but I never saw the
> point in it; Tubby himself used delay echo, and I prefer this, which is very
> clear and discreet, whereas reverb echo is brassy, a little muddy, and to some
> extent out of your control.
As I pointed out in another post: what is commonly called 'delay' (or
alternatively: echo) and reverb are completely different effects from a musical
point of view.
Tubby used both a delay (or 'echo') of the tape-echo type and a reverb unit from
the spring reverb type.
> Sampling - this has become very popular over the years, but it has also
> given rise to a lot of unpleasant litigation - you can sample to your heart's
> content if a) no one can recognize the sample or its copyright has gone out of
> date; b) you procure a license for it; or, c) you're doing it entirely for your
> own enjoyment and have no intention of putting it up for sale. I myself don't
> bother with sampling, it's too easy. But others rely on it and find somethings
> to do with it that would never occur to me.
It would be a very big misconception to think that only parts of other songs can be
sampled. In fact, by far the most common use of a sampler is to sample just sounds
from instruments or any other source that you can then use as an instrument
yourself. You can store all the sounds you want to use in your sampler and
construct a complete song with it, without there being any part of another song in
it.
> Phasing, chorus, flange - these must be applied tactfully. Lee Perry was
> a master of it - but I've experimented with these over and over, and I just
> can't get them right. The root obstacle to overcome is that application of
> these effects changes the pitch of the instrument to which they are applied.
Not really, merely the timbre.
> My assumption is that Perry probably had one hand on the effects-control, and
> another on the pitch-control, and altered both simultaneously;
Nope.
The key to the use of these effects to use them on individual instruments only.
I sense a long discussion coming up.... ;-)
Werner.
WinnerEJ
>Werner
Please re-read my letter/post. my bass was getting reverb, not delay.
>As an acoustician, I would have to consider this hall as being very bad
>design. In
>fact, the worst thing that can happen to a concert hall is that there is a
>separate
>perceivable 'echo' from any boundary (for example a wall), usually called
>'flutter'
It doesn't appear that you have listened to a lot of rockabilly. I suggest
digging up a copy of the collection of Sun singles and giving it a good listen;
Elvis knew exactly what he was doing, and he was doing this..
We're talking pop music here, and having played in punk rock bands, I can
assure you that acoustics theory counts for nothing to a large segment of the
music-making populace. We hear theory. and we either run to the hills or start
packing heat - "Louie Louie" forever !
A band finds its own sound in its own way, and deals with electronically
attenuated acoustics of performance space without regard for acoustics theory,
so they depend instead on the quality of their instruments -which includes the
monitors, the mic and the PA - and the taste of the sound-board engineer.
Your other posts on this thread are most informative, and are useful to my
original post, which your knowledge doesn't really contradict. We do differ on
one minor point - you write of "echo" in its technical sense; I am using the
word in a loose and common sense. To the man on the street any bounce-back
sound is an echo, as long as it returns diminishing copies of the original
sound, even if there is distortion in the process, as long as this distortion
doesn't bleed into feed-back.
>So, yes: reverberation can be described as a complicated series of delays,
but the effect of single delays (relatively largly spaced in time) and
what is usually called reverb on sound is very different..
That's what I was arguing!
>It would be a very big misconception to think that only parts of other songs
can be
sampled.
It would, so I don't Perhaps I should have clarified my term usage - I'm
perfectly aware of midi-sampling, and chose instead to use the term "sampling"
in its special sense, within the immediate context, since much modern dance
music revolves around this issue Especially reggae. with its multiple voicings
over a single previously recorded rythm track.
>I think a good thing is to point out that the adding of the effects is best
done in
the final mixing stage when the actual 'dubbing' is done, not during the
recording
of the individual tracks.
Agreed; but obviously I have greater tolerance for musician choices - if a
musician prefers to use delay pedal instead of waiting, that's his/her choice
and he/she will live with its consequences
> >The root obstacle to overcome is that application of these effects changes
the pitch of the instrument to which they are applied.
>Not really, merely the timbre..
My personal experience and experimenting stand as contradiction of your
negation. If you try pouring a ton of phasing on, say, an electric organ -
as I have - you will alter the pitch. I have heard it, I bear witness to it
>> My assumption is that Perry probably had one hand on the effects-control,
and
another on the pitch-control, and altered both simultaneously;
>Nope.
The key to the use of these effects to use them on individual instruments only.
I grant that my reference to Perry was presumptive on my part - bit of dry
humor, actually. Unfortunately, your remark has nothing to do with the
quotation you are negating, In my snippet on Perry (above)I I am nowhere near
making the assumption you negate, so I have no idea what you are talking about
Since I teach remedial reading and writing at a local college, I can see
the fallacious all-or-nothing logic in your writing.
> I think you would be interested to take a look into the homestudios of many
of
todays top dub producers and see that they are in fact not professional at all.
Doesn't change my suggestion much, which was specifically aimed at the four
track cassette recorder which in it commercial version is incapable of
attaining the clarity of sound expected by an audiophile
I've done home-recording, Werner, I make this suggestion out of my own
experience, and the experience of other musician friends who have used the
cassette fourtrack. You may indeed be adept at it to the extent that you
minimalize the background "air", but you can't get rid of it entirely.
I just want to add here that you and Al have misread my letter/post and
have supposed assumptions on my part, which is wrong and wrong-headed,
condescending, and putting words in my mouth so you can negate what you claim I
have to say. Very disheartening.
I will take the knowledge of acoustics you have to share, and respect you
for it. But my background is both deeper and broader than you appear to have
assumed.
I hope that assumption is wrong, and we are simply talking "crossways" at
each other. Should it be the case, however,
I again point out that I must stand by my experience. I learned a lot from
being a punk rocker,- most importantly to avoid acoustics theory (and music
theory) like the plague, and instead, play whatever my heart leads me to.
What theory adequately accounts for the sounds Jimi Hendrix got by setting his
electric guitar on fire? - you may say "that's not music", to which I would
respond, go read John Cage.
All the best despite our differences,
ej .
WinnerEJ
>> accident,
>electronic delay was invented on purpose by Les Paul the guitar
>player (he also invented overdubbing). It was not an accident.
>Al
And I never said it was - go back and read that fragment you think you are
correcting - the important phrase has two words in it, the possessive "delay's"
and the noun "echo". Subjects of sentences are nouns or pronouns, but the
possessive "delay's" is clearly neither of these, therefore it is not the
subject of the sentence. So I have no idea what you're talking about; but
whatever it is, it hasn't got anything to do with what I've written
I know Les Paul's innovations, and they are topics for another discussion
- they just don't apply here. He rarely if ever used the delay for an
echo-effect, and I've known for twenty years that he came up with the idea of
overdubbing, but if he has a straight dub album around, I've never heard it
.> Most audio professionals would never
>refer to reverberation as "echo"
Neither did I. The phrase I used was "reverb-generated echo". I don't believe
this phrase indicates any intention to refer to reverb as an echo, merely a
possible source of an echo..
Having misread my text, you then go on to develop an argument against what
you claim I wrote (but didn't), - which just happens to be an agument _for_
the points I did write in the original. letter/post....
In the future, please read more carefully and pay attention to grammatical
structures.
As for the words you attempted to put in my mouth, they were easily removed
with a saltwater gargle, leaving no lasting damage.
respect despite our differences,
ej
Werner de Bruijn
> On Wed, 18 Oct 2000 00:37:14 +0200, Werner de Bruijn
> <wer...@akst.tn.tudelft.nl> wrote:
>
> >> 2. Midi- one can skip the wave file construction phase entirely and build dubs
> >> using midi software alone. This will limit the effects you get, however,
> >
> >This is not true. In fact, the opposite may be more the case.
>
> No, Winner is right, but it depends what you call midi effects. If you
> mean running your effect device(s) with midi data, you could be right,
> however, an echo created with midi data (that is repeat of the chord
> in notes rather then through an echomachine) will always be inferior
> then an echo created with an echodevice.
No, Winner is not right. I was not talking at all about using midi data to create
effects (almost completely useless), I am talking about playing a midi sequence on your
computer that controls the *instruments* and running the output of the instruments
through external effects gear and to postpone the generation of wav files from this to
the latest possible stage in the building of a song. This is *by far* the most flexible
way to build an electronic song, since it does not only give you the opportunity to
experiment a lot with different effects settings in real-time, it even makes it possible
at any instant to completely change the sound that is used to play a certain part of the
song, the pitch it is played with, the volume of each individual instrument in the total
mix etc. Once you record to wav: that's it. Nothing can be changed anymore, you can just
add things.
I now realize that Winners comment quoted above could be understood as meaning using
*only* a midi sequencer and your computer's soundcard without using any external gear
(although in the next sentence which I didn't quote he speaks about midi sequences
sounding different on different synthesizers), but I again want to point out that any
misunderstanding concerning this arises from the fact that the ".wav" approach to
building a song is really not the most logical one in electronics-based music.
WinnerEJ
>meaning using
>*only* a midi sequencer and your computer's soundcard without using any
>external gear
>Werner.
>
Yes, that was my point. As I said, your posts on this thread are informative,
and I only got defensive when I felt that a passage I wrote had been misread.
I should also apologize to both you and Al for 2 things: First, I should
have defined my terms as I went along. As a letter, the original text is
sound, but it lacks a certain precision to be an article. As I admitted to an
off-line responder, I should have let the piece sit a couple of days so that I
could catch issues of this sort.
The other thing I apologize for is that my humor is very dry, and when it
is too dry, it's intentions can get misinterpreted. My remark about Les Paul
not producing a dub album, is obviously intended to be taken humorously, but on
re-reading it this morning, I recognized that the motivation behind it could be
interpreted by Al as hostile - which was not the case.
Similarly, my description of the original punk rockers running to hills or
arming themselves whenever we heard "theory" was obviously intended to be
taken as hyperbolically comic; what was not so obvious was that I wrote that to
describe certain attitudes of _some_ musicians, and that our own disdain for
theory back then was an almost ethical choice on our parts (as long as you
could play three chords you were a guitarist, even if you could only play those
three chords - "do it yourself" was the directive, and the proper response to
hearing a band you didn't like was to go form your own band the next day,.even
if you and your friends didn't know how to play any instruments at all;
electric guitars cost $15-$25 at pawn shops, toss in another $50 for an amp,
and - bam! - you were a rock star; - this was antithetically aimed at our
older ex-hippy siblings, who had started out doing exactly the same thing in
the '60s, but who, by 1975, had actually become proficient at their instruments
and talked as though they had known theory from the beginning - which was not
true - as instance: the only musician in Credence Clearwater Revival was John
Fogerty, he actually had to show his brother and friends how to play so they
could back him up).
But my point here is that this remark was not intended to insult
theoreticians. Theory has its place in music; a soundboard engineer at a pop
music concert doesn't need to know theory, he/she could develop the needed
knowledge through practical trial and error, but an engineer with some
accoustics theory under his/her belt obviously can attain the same goal much
more rapidly.
My only concern here is that practioners can get so tangled up in theory
that they can lose touch with the feelings and intuitions which attracted them
to music in the first place - which is why I always tell young musicians 'after
you've read the manual, toss it away". You can make sounds by experimentation
that would never occur to the manual-writers.
Just to highlight this, consider King Tubby and his major apprentices,
Jammy and Scientist, all of whom started out as _electronics_ engineers
repairing sound equipment. I will pay a thousand dollars cash money to anybody
who can prove Tubby and Augustus Pablo sat down and composed a score for "King
Tubby Meets the Rockers Uptown" (dub effects included) on paper before going
into the studio.
Eventually, all musicians reach a point where they find the need to use
language to describe what they do. That's theory. But I want to leave the
door open to novices who need first to explore their interest in music.
A concrete example is the drummer in a band I jam with, who has taught
drumming to five students over the course of the past year, at least three of
whom are now in bands. The first thing he had them do is sit down with the
drums and "make a sound"; after they'd exhausted this clatter-and-bang
approach, he then told them, "very good, now give me a beat." Then he would
show tem one professional drumming technique per lesson, and sent them home to
practice it. Finally, at the end of every lesson he showed them a new ankle or
wrist excersize, which had nothing to do with music, but without which they
couldn't develop the physical stamina to drum for any great length of time.
Although he has written scores for rock pieces - one has seven changes played
over 20 minutes - he wouldn't let his students even look at sheet music; "learn
to play the drums, then I can explain how to read a score." Whenever they
would log-jam from uncertainty about what to do next, he would tell them "look,
just go crazy," essentially sending them back to the clatter-and-bang phase so
they could stop listening to the self-doubt in their brains, and hear the music
instead.
He and I have had many differences and difficulties over the years, but we
both agree on matters such as this. And his success rate with his students -
100% - is far greater than that of another friend who plays piano, and who has
taught theory simultaneously with practice to six students over the past year,
three of whom just finally gave up. In fact my pianist friend has been
gradually, on his own, developing teaching techniques similar to those of my
drummer friend, and his success rate appears to be improving accordingly. He
now has three new students, and they have shown little of the frustration that
the three who quit expressed.
At any rate, I hope my rambling on this way has proven beneficial to some
small extent and helped clear up any misunderstandings. I continue to respect
both Werner and Al, despite any diferences., so can honestly close with my
salutation,
1 love shared,
ej
Werner de Bruijn
> >I now realize that Winners comment quoted above could be understood as
> >meaning using
> >*only* a midi sequencer and your computer's soundcard without using any
> >external gear
>
> >Werner.
> >
>
> Yes, that was my point. As I said, your posts on this thread are informative,
> and I only got defensive when I felt that a passage I wrote had been misread.
> I should also apologize to both you and Al for 2 things: First, I should
> have defined my terms as I went along. As a letter, the original text is
> sound, but it lacks a certain precision to be an article. As I admitted to an
> off-line responder, I should have let the piece sit a couple of days so that I
> could catch issues of this sort.
> The other thing I apologize for is that my humor is very dry, and when it
> is too dry, it's intentions can get misinterpreted.
1)Why do you only quote the part of my post where I say something that is useful
for your own argument, while it was merely the introductory part to a sentence
which after the 'but' immediately following this introduction explained why I feel
very *different* about the issue under discussion? Weren't you the one who was
talking about selective quoting?
2) Comments like "Since I teach remedial reading and writing at a local college, I
can see
the fallacious all-or-nothing logic in your writing." are from my point of view
very offensive, not defensive at all, as were more parts of your reply to my post.
3) Apologies are nice, but you apologize for the wrong things.
I'm not at all interested in starting a feud with you, but if you think that by
posting the post that I'm responding to now everything is cool again then you're
wrong. I sympathize with the '1 love' mentality you are spreading, but it's not an
instant solution to any argument. I will comment on your other post later on when I
have more time to carefully pick my words, since I still stand by most of the
comments I made and therefore still don't agree with some of the things you say. I
will try to keep it 'to the point' however.
Right now I'm just a bit pissed of that by this last post you have taken away to
some extent my chance to respond in the way I intended. Well, this present post
probably also shows quite well how I feel.
But I'm sure we will sort this out shortly.
Werner de Bruijn
> On Wed, 18 Oct 2000 00:08:25 +0200, Werner de Bruijn
> <wer...@akst.tn.tudelft.nl> wrote:
>
> >Putting delay on a bass is usually not a good idea.
>
> What do you think of the opening track of Scientist wins the World
> cup, with the hands of the Scientist puts an EQ'd echo in the bass.
Unfortunately I don't have this album, so I can't comment on this
specific track. However, a very good example of the type of bass lines
for which it *can* work is the track "Eden Dub" from Jammy's "Uhuru in
Dub". Short, sparse bass notes.
Werner de Bruijn
WinnerEJ wrote:
> >putting delay on a bass is usually not a good idea.
>
> >Werner
>
> Please re-read my letter/post. my bass was getting reverb, not delay.
Any possible misunderstanding about this can only have been the result of your
inaccurate and confusing use of the word 'echo'.
> >As an acoustician, I would have to consider this hall as being very bad
> >design. In
> >fact, the worst thing that can happen to a concert hall is that there is a
> >separate
> >perceivable 'echo' from any boundary (for example a wall), usually called
> >'flutter'
>
> It doesn't appear that you have listened to a lot of rockabilly. I suggest
> digging up a copy of the collection of Sun singles and giving it a good listen;
> Elvis knew exactly what he was doing, and he was doing this..
> We're talking pop music here, and having played in punk rock bands, I can
> assure you that acoustics theory counts for nothing to a large segment of the
> music-making populace.
I was making a comment to the fact that you stated that "reverb was created back in
the '50's to give a band in a small room the sound of a large hall, which means
that bounce-back echo is part of reverb's original design, since accoustically this
is what you expect an electric instrument to do in a large hall." I don't care how
many Elvis's or punkrockers you drag into it: this statement is just crap.
> Your other posts on this thread are most informative, and are useful to my
> original post, which your knowledge doesn't really contradict.
That's because you're not reading it right.
> We do differ on
> one minor point - you write of "echo" in its technical sense;
> I am using the
> word in a loose and common sense.
Again: *you* are the one who is not reading right.
Check my post again where I give the '101' on delay and reverb. The term 'echo' is
not present at all in this post. I explicitly chose to leave it out, because of the
confusion it has already caused in the discussion, thanks to your inaccurate,
confusing use of it.
> >So, yes: reverberation can be described as a complicated series of delays,
> but the effect of single delays (relatively largly spaced in time) and
> what is usually called reverb on sound is very different..
>
> That's what I was arguing!
I don't like it that you pick snippets from several of my posts that concern
different issues and put them together in a way that you think is useful to your
case. The above quote was from a post where I explain to Messian Dread, from a
technical point of view, what is the difference between delay and reverb. I have no
idea why you are importing it into *this* post.
> >It would be a very big misconception to think that only parts of other songs
> can be
> sampled.
>
> It would, so I don't Perhaps I should have clarified my term usage - I'm
> perfectly aware of midi-sampling,
what do you mean by 'midi-sampling'? The sampling of sounds that I am talking about
and the sampling of parts of other songs that you were talking about are completely
the same process. Only the source and way of using them is different.
> and chose instead to use the term "sampling"
> in its special sense, within the immediate context, since much modern dance
> music revolves around this issue Especially reggae. with its multiple voicings
> over a single previously recorded rythm track.
The special sense that you chose only concerned the usage of snippets from other
people's work. I quote:
"Sampling - this has become very popular over the years, but it has also given rise
to a lot of unpleasant litigation - you can sample to your heart's content if a) no
one can recognize the sample or its copyright has gone out of date; b) you procure
a license for it; or, c) you're doing it entirely for your own enjoyment and have
no intention of putting it up for sale. I myself don't
bother with sampling, it's too easy. But others rely on it and find somethings to
do with it that would never occur to me." end quote.
I again say: this is an extremely limited view on sampling and what it has to do
with "reggae, with its multiple voicings over a single previously recorded rythm
track." is a complete mystery to me.
> >I think a good thing is to point out that the adding of the effects is best
> done in
> the final mixing stage when the actual 'dubbing' is done, not during the
> recording
> of the individual tracks.
>
> Agreed; but obviously I have greater tolerance for musician choices
greater than me, you mean?
Who is making assumptions here? I gave some useful advice which in most cases works
the best. Your idea *was* to give a newbie an introduction to the basics of dub,
right?
> > >The root obstacle to overcome is that application of these effects changes
> the pitch of the instrument to which they are applied.
>
> >Not really, merely the timbre..
>
> My personal experience and experimenting stand as contradiction of your
> negation. If you try pouring a ton of phasing on, say, an electric organ -
> as I have - you will alter the pitch. I have heard it, I bear witness to it
This is a specific example of which I'm not even sure it's true, but that aside: I
was making a comment to your *general* remark: "Phasing, chorus, flange - these
must be applied tactfully. Lee Perry was a master of it - but I've experimented
with these over and over, and I just
can't get them right. The root obstacle to overcome is that application of these
effects changes the pitch of the instrument to which they are applied." See:
"change the pitch of the instrument to which they are applied", not "change the
pitch of an organ when you use extreme amounts of them". I said it before and I say
it again: you're statement is false. These effects change the timbre. If you don't
know the difference then I'll be happy to explain it to you.
> >> My assumption is that Perry probably had one hand on the effects-control,
> and
> another on the pitch-control, and altered both simultaneously;
>
> >Nope.
> The key to the use of these effects to use them on individual instruments only.
>
> I grant that my reference to Perry was presumptive on my part - bit of dry
> humor, actually. Unfortunately, your remark has nothing to do with the
> quotation you are negating, In my snippet on Perry (above)I I am nowhere near
> making the assumption you negate, so I have no idea what you are talking about
Ok:
The "Nope" was a comment to your suggestion that Perry was operating an
effects-control and pitch-control simultaneously. This is pure nonsense.
The "The key to the use of these effects to use them on individual instruments
only." part was, as I thought was quite obvious, a general advice of how these kind
of effects are best used: on individual tracks, instead of the whole mix. Maybe I
should have put a white line between this and the "Nope".
> Since I teach remedial reading and writing at a local college, I can see
> the fallacious all-or-nothing logic in your writing.
This, EJ, is the thing I think you should apologize for. I can't believe I am
reading this.
The patronizing tone of this and the suggestion that I'm using "fallacious
all-or-nothing logic" in this or any discussion is just plain insulting.
> > I think you would be interested to take a look into the homestudios of many
> of
> todays top dub producers and see that they are in fact not professional at all.
>
> Doesn't change my suggestion much, which was specifically aimed at the four
> track cassette recorder which in it commercial version is incapable of
> attaining the clarity of sound expected by an audiophile
1) Again: you would be interested to take a look into the homestudios of many of
todays top dub producers or at least the way it looked at the time they made their
first releases. There are 4-track cassette recorders there. So for someone who is a
newbie to dub this is a good tool to start with. Take a look around on the net and
check the pictures of the studios of some of my and perhaps your favorite dub
producers. These are not professional studios. Advizing a starting musician to
"purchase or rent studio level recording equipment" is foolish.
2) audiophiles should stay away from reggae. (this was a joke)
> I just want to add here that you and Al have misread my letter/post and
> have supposed assumptions on my part, which is wrong and wrong-headed,
> condescending, and putting words in my mouth so you can negate what you claim I
> have to say. Very disheartening.
What I find disheartening is that, *assuming* you are at least somewhat familiar
with both Al's and my own numerous contributions to this newsgroup, you could even
*consider* the possibility that we are "putting words in your mouth so we can
negate what we claim you have to say".
I'd like you to specify what assumptions you think I have made about you.
> I will take the knowledge of acoustics you have to share, and respect you
> for it.
Respect of this kind means *nothing* to me, since the fact that I'm an acoustician
has *nothing* to do with the comments I made in the post you're replying to.
Well, of course, as we have seen: you decided to compose a new message from
snippets of several of my posts written in different contexts, so that complicates
it a bit....
> But my background is both deeper and broader than you appear to have
> assumed.
You keep talking about assumptions. Specify them please.
At the start of your original post you said that you were "interested in any
helpful critique or additions."
Since in my original reply I strictly made what I thought were relevant and useful
comments to statements made by you, I can only conclude that helpful critique in
your view only includes applause and appraisal for the wonderful job you've done.
Perhaps you should think about this for a while.
> All the best despite our differences,
I guess sharing the "1 love" is also reserved only for people who agree with you,
right?
I am sorry that this present post has become a bit more fired up than I promised it
would be. For me this is finished now, I said what I had to say.
As far as I'm concerned: back to dub now.
WinnerEJ
>useful
>for your own argument, while it was merely the introductory part to a
>sentence
>which after the 'but' immediately following this introduction explained why I
>feel
>very *different* about the issue under discussion?
I thought that what was at issue was clarifying my intent. I have not
confronted anything you have said about computer and midi-dubbing, because you
obviously know more about this than I do - I was leaving your points
unchallenged because I wanted this thread to be educational, not argumentive.
The points that I did challenge I did so because they were in contradiction to
my experience. None of the points I left unchallenged were, so I assumed you
had greater knowledge than my own. (You appear to assume that I leave your
points unargued because I believe you are wrong, - when, to the contrary, I
believe it quite likely you are right, and so why debate with someone from whom
I can learn?)
>Weren't you the one who was
>talking about selective quoting?
No, what concerned me was obvious misreadings, such as
"putting delay on a bass is usually not a good idea". - I never said it was!
I've never put delay on the bass and I wrote nothing about doing so. So mine
was not a charge of selective quoting, but of simple misreading.
>2) Comments like "Since I teach remedial reading and writing at a local
>college, I
>can see
>the fallacious all-or-nothing logic in your writing." are from my point of
>view
>very offensive, not defensive at all, as were more parts of your reply to
>my post
Actually, since you were making an issue of your expertise in acoustics, what I
thought I was doing was giving you a gentle ribbing, from one educated man to
another. I meant no disrespect. If that sentence or any other I wrote was
offensive to you, I retract them all, and apologize for writing them.
>3) Apologies are nice, but you apologize for the wrong things.
I apologize in advance for anything you believe I ought to apologize for.
>I'm not at all interested in starting a feud with you,
Good, because I will not participate in any.
> but if you think that by
>posting the post that I'm responding to now everything is cool again then
>you're
>wrong.
I'm sorry you feel that way. I hold no animosity toward you and if there is
any way to make amends, let me know, and if it is in my power, I will do it,
> I sympathize with the '1 love' mentality you are spreading, but it's not an
>instant solution to any argument.
Actually, I disagree with you here, I think it is. "Logic and arguments never
convince." - Walt Whitman.
Argumentation is only interesting to me if it can be pursued playfully, as
a game. If you wish to take it more seriously so you can be in the right, let
me give that to you immediately - you are in the right, and I am in the wrong.
There, now we have nothing more to argue about. Address what you have to say
about dub to novices you can educate better than I can. I am not saying this
trivially; - if it is important to you, I give it to you, gladly and without
regret. I would rather be considered a fool or a coward, than that I should be
the cause of someone's unhappiness by holding positions which they consider of
greater import than I - and they may be right, and I allow that..
>I will comment on your other post later on when I
>have more time to carefully pick my words, since I still stand by most of the
>comments I made and therefore still don't agree with some of the things you
>say.
It has ever been my understanding that two educated people can disagree on
important issues, without resolution, and yet remain living in equanimity.
>Right now I'm just a bit pissed of that by this last post you have taken away
>to
>some extent my chance to respond in the way I intended.
If I could help that. I would. And I add without condescension that I expect
your repost to be informative and educational.
>Well, this present post
>probably also shows quite well how I feel.
Yes, and I regret any conflict I may have unwittingly participated in.
>But I'm sure we will sort this out shortly.
>
>Werner.
Such would be my preference
.
1 love shared,
ej
WinnerEJ
We seem to have posted almost simultaneously, so I reply in detail so that you
understand that I understand what you are talking about. Then I will respect
your wishes and drop the subject.
>Any possible misunderstanding about this can only have been the result of
>your
>inaccurate and confusing use of the word 'echo'.
Again I was using the term in its loose and common usage. I can well see that
this would be seen as inaccurate by an acoustician, and that this inaccurancy
would indicate confusion; that is why I say I should have defined my terms, so
that the meaning would be clear even if I was misappropiating the word.
>I was making a comment to the fact that you stated that "reverb was created
>back in
>the '50's to give a band in a small room the sound of a large hall, which
>means
>that bounce-back echo is part of reverb's original design, since
>accoustically this
>is what you expect an electric instrument to do in a large hall."
> I don't care how
>many Elvis's or punkrockers you drag into it: this statement is just crap.
Obviously I was confusing the purpose of the design with the use that musicians
have made of it, I apologize for the confusion, and for any confusion in turn
arising from my sloppy presentation.
of the matter.
>> Your other posts on this thread are most informative, and are useful
>to my
>> original post, which your knowledge doesn't really contradict.
>
>That's because you're not reading it right.
I apologize for any misreading on my part. However, I still believe that we
share more of a common understanding than you say we do.
>Again: *you* are the one who is not reading right.
>Check my post again where I give the '101' on delay and reverb. The term
>'echo' is
>not present at all in this post. I explicitly chose to leave it out, because
>of the
>confusion it has already caused in the discussion, thanks to your inaccurate,
>confusing use of it.
I addressed the "echo" issue because that appeared to be the issue you were
addressing, even if you didn't use the word. If I was wromg in making that
assumption, I apologize.
>I don't like it that you pick snippets from several of my posts that concern
>different issues and put them together in a way that you think is useful to
>your
>case.
I put snippets together in a way that I thought would clear up the matter, I
wasn't making a case. Obviously my usage did not make this clear. I
apologize.
>The above quote was from a post where I explain to Messian Dread, from a
>technical point of view, what is the difference between delay and reverb. I
>have no
>idea why you are importing it into *this* post.
I did so because I thought we were still in the process of untying the "echo"
knot. If I misunderstood you, I apologize.
> The sampling of sounds that I am talking about
>and the sampling of parts of other songs that you were talking about are
>completely
>the same process. Only the source and way of using them is different.
I do not, and did not, disagree with you.
>The special sense that you chose only concerned the usage of snippets from
>other
>people's work.
That is true, and I could not and do not understand why you seemed to find
this confusing or unacceptable usage, if it was clear in its context.
>I again say: this is an extremely limited view on sampling
it was intended to be; it was a special usage, not to be applied to the
technical act of sampling per se. I'm sorry for the confusion.
>and what it has to do
>with "reggae, with its multiple voicings over a single previously recorded
>rythm
>track." is a complete mystery to me
I made a leap of logic here and did not explain myself clearly. In a loose
sense, one can say that every DJ track is a voicing over a "sampled" rhythm
track. But obviously this was too grand a leap, and perhaps unallowable. I
apologize.
>> >I think a good thing is to point out that the adding of the effects is
>best
>> done in
>> the final mixing stage when the actual 'dubbing' is done, not during the
>> recording
>> of the individual tracks.
>> Agreed; but obviously I have greater tolerance for musician choices
>
>greater than me, you mean?
>Who is making assumptions here?
You're right, I was making an inaccurate asumption here; I felt I was being
patronizingly "one-upped"; I see now that you were giving "some useful advice
which in most cases works the best."
> Your idea *was* to give a newbie an introduction to the basics of
>dub,
>right?
Correct; so my misinterpretation of your intentions was a detriment to my
cause.
>I said it before and I say
>it again: you're statement is false. These effects change the timbre. If you
>don't
>know the difference then I'll be happy to explain it to you.
I welcome your explanation, but the organ I applied phasing to changed key by a
half-step. If that's a timbre issue, then obviously I am mistaken.
>The "Nope" was a comment to your suggestion that Perry was operating an
>effects-control and pitch-control simultaneously. This is pure nonsense.
It was intended to be - that's why I intended it as a "bit of dry humor". I
apologize if my sense of humor is not acceptible under the current
circumstance.
> "The key to the use of these effects to use them on individual instruments
>only." part was, as I thought was quite obvious, a general advice of how
>these kind
>of effects are best used: on individual tracks, instead of the whole mix
Agreed; and stripping this remark from the foregoing "nope" makes it clear; we
were writing over multiple contexts, and I apologize for my part in that.
>> Since I teach remedial reading and writing at a local college, I can
>see
>> the fallacious all-or-nothing logic in your writing.
>This, EJ, is the thing I think you should apologize for. I can't believe I am
>reading this.
>The patronizing tone of this and the suggestion that I'm using "fallacious
>all-or-nothing logic" in this or any discussion is just plain insulting.
I have apologized for it, I do apologize for it. As I said, I intended it to
come across much more lightly than apparently occurred. I'm sorry.
>) Again: you would be interested to take a look into the homestudios of many
>of
>todays top dub producers or at least the way it looked at the time they made
>their
>first releases. There are 4-track cassette recorders there. So for someone
>who is a
>newbie to dub this is a good tool
>to start with.
When you put it that way, I concur and withdraw my argument.
>Advizing a starting musician to
>"purchase or rent studio level recording equipment" is foolish.
"Studio level recording equipment" is, at least in the US, cheap to rent and
easy to use. The cassette fourtrack costs more and takes more practice to use
properly. But I can understand why someone might think my remark foolish, and
accept the charge.
>What I find disheartening is that, *assuming* you are at least somewhat
>familiar
>with both Al's and my own numerous contributions to this newsgroup, you could
>even
>*consider* the possibility that we are "putting words in your mouth so we can
>negate what we claim you have to say".
I apologize.
>I'd like you to specify what assumptions you think I have made about you.
I thought you were assuming that I was impudent, did not know what I was
talking about (a particular sore spot for me since articulating my
understanding of music into words is very difficult for me), have no experience
to rely on, and consequently have nothing of value to contribute to the common
knowledge of music per se and reggae in particular. Coming from a provincial
backwater city in the process of decay, I have had to deal with these and
similar assumptions my entire life. As one co-worker put it, I'm "too New
York", i.e.New York City. The community in which I live not only does not need
me, it doesn't want me. If I hadn't gotten trapped into a mortgage I can never
pay off, I would be out of here in a flash, Instead, this is what I go
through:
You are an acoustician, right? Suppose every day of your life, anybody
you mention this to would respond "well, you can't be very good at it, then"
without explaining what that "then" means, the conditions you don't appear to
fulfill and that you don't even know. That's my life,
As I write these words, I weep; - but I refuse to wallow in self-pity.
It is much easier to walk around with a chip on one's shoulder. Much easier to
risk misinterpreting Wener and getting into a silly firefight over the use of
the word "echo", .
-snip-
> I can only conclude that helpful critique in
>your view only includes applause and appraisal for the wonderful job you've
>done.
A cheap piece of dogshit like myself? I hardly think so.
Moch respect, and love,
ej winner.
please forgive me; the matter drops here.
Werner de Bruijn
I feel a strong urge to make some final comments, I promise this is the last you
will hear from me.
First and foremost: the only intention I had with my original reply to your 'dub
101' was, as you had requested yourself, to give critique or additions at points
where I thought it useful and/or necessary, all in the spirit of "sharing the
knowledge". A large part of your post was quite good I thought, so I only made
remarks where I felt it was useful.
At least I'm glad that you seem to have recognized this to some degree by now,
judging from your latest reply to which I won't comment in detail anymore, except
for this:
If I somehow gave you the impression that I was assuming that you "did not know
what you were talking about, have no experience to rely on, and consequently have
nothing of value to contribute to the common knowledge of music per se and reggae
in particular" then I am very sorry about that. This was never my intention, as I
explained above.
In this quote, I intentionally left out the part that says "assuming that I was
impudent". Whether or not I think you're impudent is an opinion based on the way
you respond to my posts, not an assumption.
> >2) Comments like "Since I teach remedial reading and writing at a local
> >college, I
> >can see
> >the fallacious all-or-nothing logic in your writing." are from my point of
> >view
> >very offensive, not defensive at all, as were more parts of your reply to
> >my post
>
> Actually, since you were making an issue of your expertise in acoustics, what I
> thought I was doing was giving you a gentle ribbing, from one educated man to
> another. I meant no disrespect. If that sentence or any other I wrote was
> offensive to you, I retract them all, and apologize for writing them.
My mention of my profession had nothing to do with all the dub-technique related
comments I made. I mentioned it a) *in a separate post not even addressed to you*
to explain very fundamentally what is the relationship between delay and reverb and
b) in my reply to your post to respond to your remark "since accoustically this is
what you expect an electric instrument to do in a large hall."
You brought the "acoustics" into the discussion, obviously without accurate
knowledge in this field, so I, as an acoustician, brought in my knowledge in this
field *at this specific point* in the discussion.
All other remarks I made came from my own experience as an electronic "home-dubber"
and had nothing to do with my profession. Actually: I very much enjoy playing my
reggae records for my colleagues at work exactly because of the big contrast
between the music I love and the state-of-the-art systems we are working on.
> >3) Apologies are nice, but you apologize for the wrong things.
>
> I apologize in advance for anything you believe I ought to apologize for.
My God man, don't you see that statements like this make *any* apology, past,
present or future, made by you completely worthless?!?!?!?!
> Address what you have to say
> about dub to novices you can educate better than I can. I am not saying this
> trivially; - if it is important to you, I give it to you, gladly and without
> regret. I would rather be considered a fool or a coward, than that I should be
> the cause of someone's unhappiness by holding positions which they consider of
> greater import than I - and they may be right, and I allow that..
EJ, I'm appalled by this remark. I can't begin to tell you how belittling this is.
Also, it is one of the ugliest examples of false modesty I have ever seen.
You seem to be quite good at constructing eloquent arguments using complex logical
and grammatical structures, as appears to be your profession. Unfortunately, you
seem to be totally incapable to judge the emotional content and implications of
your epistles.
I can't remember anyone ever pissing me off to the extent that you did in this
discussion, so I congratulate you on that.
I am through with you and will ignore any future posts by you.
Werner.
ps: I apologize to the group for the ugly turn this has taken.
Werner de Bruijn
> Uhuru in Dub I do not have that one here, but i know it. You're right
> it will work on those kind of lines. But you need the hands of a good
> dub mixer to do it I think.
Absolutely.
Werner.
Werner de Bruijn
> >I was not talking at all about using midi data to create
> >effects (almost completely useless), I am talking about playing a midi sequence on your
> >computer that controls the *instruments* and running the output of the instruments
> >through external effects gear and to postpone the generation of wav files from this to
> >the latest possible stage in the building of a song. This is *by far* the most flexible
> >way to build an electronic song, since it does not only give you the opportunity to
> >experiment a lot with different effects settings in real-time, it even makes it possible
> >at any instant to completely change the sound that is used to play a certain part of the
> >song, the pitch it is played with, the volume of each individual instrument in the total
> >mix etc. Once you record to wav: that's it. Nothing can be changed anymore, you can just
> >add things.
>
> I know what you write is true in the case when you actually do have
> these external devices, only not under every circumstances. For me, if
> I would make a midifile and play that, it will sound worse then my
> tracks which I have made using WAVE technology.
Ok, so what you do is that you play the individual midi-parts on your soundcard, connect the
output of the soundcard to it's own input and record that to wav, so that you can use wav
editing software to process the wav files and arrange them in a "multi track view" (as it's
called in Cooledit) to construct a song, do I understand that right?
In that case I agree, this gives you more possibilities than just playing the midi song
through the soundcard.
> I think, as you realized, Winner was chatting about the kind of
> midifile I talk about here.
Yes, I see this now. It wasn't my first understanding of the procedure because I think that
it's a rather unusual way to do it, don't you agree? But I see the need for it when you have
no external devices.
> I think stricktly taken, a soundcard is also a synthesizer/sampler.
This depends on the soundcard. Mine, for example, can be considered a sampler but not a
synthesizer, since it doesn't have a sound generating chip. Examples of the opposite also
exist. But of course a general purpose card like a soundblaster can be considered both a
simple synthesizer and sampler, that's right.
Allen Kaatz
>
> On Thu, 19 Oct 2000 16:28:28 +0200, Werner de Bruijn
> <wer...@akst.tn.tudelft.nl> wrote:
>
> >messian dread wrote:
> >> I know what you write is true in the case when you actually do have
> >> these external devices, only not under every circumstances. For me, if
> >> I would make a midifile and play that, it will sound worse then my
> >> tracks which I have made using WAVE technology.
> >
> >Ok, so what you do is that you play the individual midi-parts on your soundcard, connect the
> >output of the soundcard to it's own input and record that to wav, so that you can use wav
> >editing software to process the wav files and arrange them in a "multi track view" (as it's
> >called in Cooledit) to construct a song, do I understand that right?
>
> to make Dub. I have to work totally unorthodox with software, which is
> harder then working totally unorthodox with hardware.
>
> >In that case I agree, this gives you more possibilities than just playing the midi song
> >through the soundcard.
>
>
> >> I think, as you realized, Winner was chatting about the kind of
> >> midifile I talk about here.
> >
I know I'm getting to this thread late, so I apologize if some of my
points have already been covered.
> >Yes, I see this now. It wasn't my first understanding of the procedure because I think that
> >it's a rather unusual way to do it, don't you agree? But I see the need for it when you have
> >no external devices.
I don't think this is very unusual... a lot of people work this way,
recording the audio from the midi sequence and then doing further
editing with the computer. Working totally in the digital domain is
not like traditional dub, but it is possible to do a lot of
interesting things that way. I'm sure if Lee Perry were just
starting as a producer today he would be taking advantage of digital
editing and processing. Perry actually performed "analog sampling"
on some of his records by cutting and pasting tape, so it's not a
big step conceptually to move to the digital environment once you've
done that. The big drawback to digital is that you cannot"perform"
a dub mix in real time by twisting knobs and using faders, etc. But
you can plan out and map an exciting dub piece that still sounds
good, it's just different. At the moment I do everything on the
computer, and dont' use any midi. I use samples and play
instruments recording into the hard drive and then arrange and mix
the parts. Most people use midi a lot, I just haven't gotten around
to it.
Al
Rastersuz
just a word from one with thick skin: dont take it so hard. stay around if you
get something worthwhile from rmr. keep posting because some appreciate it. i
often disagree with what you say but still i think you should say it if only to
be corrected, but youre right on more often than not. it
is, of course, up to you.
one love
jah bill
(by the way, about that post on the record being warped...wrongo! :-)